


would it be enough to go by (if there's moonlight pulling the tide)

by brightlyburning



Series: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Kink Meme Fills [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Caretaking, F/M, FE3H Kinkmeme, Female My Unit | Byleth, Light Dom/sub, POV Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Pre-Relationship, Shaving, Trust Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25082563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightlyburning/pseuds/brightlyburning
Summary: Dimitri flushed and rubbed at the back of his head. "As to my crest, I've recently developed a bit of a beard, and I'm having a hard time, er- that is to say, I'm finding myself ill-equipped to-"Byleth waited him out with the same deadly patience she employed on the training field, her expression blank of judgment or feeling, and that gave him the courage to finally blurt, his face burning,"I need help shaving, please, Professor."(A kink meme fill for the prompt, 'Dimitri's crest makes the most delicate of tasks a dangerous thing. So, he asks Byleth for her assistance shaving.')
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Series: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Kink Meme Fills [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1777993
Comments: 28
Kudos: 250





	would it be enough to go by (if there's moonlight pulling the tide)

The wood of the razor's handle splintered apart in Dimitri's grip as he twisted it to rest the blade against his jaw. The metal blade and its hinges fell to bounce once, twice, three times across the surface of his washbasin, ending up next to the two other blades that had met the same fate. Piled next to them, a sad little heap of wood shavings that had once been handles bore mute testimony to Dimitri's overbearing strength.

He'd rarely hated his crest more. 

"Saints," he muttered, the mild curse standing in for the bellowed profanity he wanted to let loose. His neighbors already had enough to bear with him coming and going at all hours of the night. 

He snatched a towel and scrubbed the soap off his face, wincing as it caught against the cut he'd managed to open on his first try shaving. In the mirror, his jaw still shone with scraggly patches of gold hair, and a faint shadow had settled above his upper lip. 

At first, he'd been thrilled to show signs of manhood; as a child and before his arrival at Garreg Mach, people had often mistaken him for a girl, and the first signs of a beard seemed like they'd put that mistake to bed for good. Full of pride, he'd shown his classmates at dinner, who'd responded as expected: Sylvain had offered to help him find women "in search of a real man"; Annette had congratulated him with enough enthusiasm to get other tables turning and looking; Ingrid had raised her eyebrows at his frivolity; Ashe had stuttered out a "Congratulations, Your Highness," and escaped; Mercedes had somehow turned it into an excuse for tea and cookies; Dedue had nodded solemnly; and Felix, well, Felix had glared at him from the end of the dinner table and eaten his spiced jerky with alarming intensity.

Perhaps Felix was jealous he hadn't started to grow hair yet; the Fraldariuses weren't known for being particularly hirsute, unlike the Blaidydds.

His father had certainly had an impressive beard, which took constant maintenance. Dimitri had spent more than a few happy mornings as a child bounding around his father and Patricia's suite, chased by a nursemaid, while the king's valet shaved him and various ministers delivered reports. It'd been a thorough and ritualistic process, fascinating to the young Dimitri: the shining blade, honed against a leather strap; the various bowls of warm water and foaming soap and tinctures; the soft hiss of hair falling from his father's face; and last, the tiny silver shears, used to neaten up the edges of the beard left behind.

The bent razors and broken handles explained why his father had someone else to do the shaving. 

The upper dormitory was still and silent outside his door, appropriate to the late hour; he could just go to bed and leave the problem of his beard for another day. But, well, no, that wouldn't work. It was the start of the school week, and he didn't want to wait five days to have time to visit the village barber. 

Goosebumps rose along his spine and shoulders, though the room was warm. A stranger, tilting his head back to bare his throat, bringing a razor blade to his skin: no. He dared not trust in the kindness of strangers anymore, not after Duscur.

Perhaps someone else, one of his companions, could shave him? No. Most of them would find it an imposition, and he tried to spare others his burdens. Dedue would do it gladly, as a duty, but it would only reinforce the hierarchy between them that Dimitri tried to dismantle. Sylvain would tease, and though he'd mean it in friendship, it would still sting.

Dimitri straightened, dropping the towel in his laundry basket, as the answer settled upon him, inevitable as a lance in his hand:

The Professor. 

Of course, how had he not thought of it before? She was not one for mockery, of any sort, and she viewed every request her Lions brought to her, no matter how odd, with a practical eye. The Lions had faith in her, which was perhaps strange - the representatives of an honorable people placing such trust in a former mercenary - but she'd proven worthy of it. 

Even Dimitri could place his problems, his fears both great and small, in her hands, and know them guarded well. 

She'd be the perfect choice.

He pulled on his boots and hurried downstairs to the courtyard.

The cold night air nipped at Dimitri's face as he entered the empty lower courtyard. The only sounds were the wind, blowing across the peak of Garreg Mach, and the faint shushing of the reservoir lapping against its stone walls. To the left, the commoners’ rooms stretched towards the training ground, with only a few windows still lit. 

The Professor's was one of them, golden light spilling onto the stone walkway nearest the sauna stairs. No surprise she was still awake; he'd seen her lamp aglow many nights when he'd been unable to sleep, headaches and nightmares driving him to walk endless loops about Garreg Mach's stairways. 

He paused in front of her door, catching sight of her shadow, bent over the desk within. Uncertainty weighed at his shoulders. Of course she'd said at the start of term that she was there for all her student's concerns, but were matters of personal hygiene really considered among them? Wasn't that what all tutors, the ones worth anything, were supposed to say?

But, no, he trusted her, put his life and the lives of his friends in her hands every weekend when they went on patrol; he could not believe that someone he trusted so fully would be unkind.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he raised his hand and rapped once on her door. The shadow moved, and he placed his arms behind his back and stood at attention, heat prickling at the back of his neck.

The Professor - Byleth - opened her door and stepped out, her neutral expression unchanging as she met Dimitri's gaze. Her dark hair curled softly about her shoulders, freshly-washed, for a few beads of water still shone at the ends. She was dressed for comfort, in loose pale trousers and shirt, the wide collar just about to slide down one scarred shoulder-

Dimitri swallowed and forced his gaze to remain on her dark eyes, which looked him up and down, one brow quirking, before she said in her usual calm, almost flat, tone,

"Come in."

He followed her into her quarters, which surprisingly looked near identical to a student's. Only a few things spoke to the person who lived there: a strange open patch of floor, lit by candles, at the head of the bed like an empty shrine; a few folders of essays and tests stacked atop the desk; a fishing pole by the door; a battered tea set perched in the windowsill; two oilskin bags at the foot of the bed containing her personal effects, as if she expected to go on campaign at any moment. Evidently mercenary habits took time to depart.

He turned, only to find Byleth waiting for him, his inspection of her private space all-too-obvious.

"Professor, forgive me, I-"

She waved his apology away as if his invasion had not bothered her one bit, and the easy acceptance loosened the tension drumming at his shoulders.

"How can I help, Dimitri?"

Goddess. How wonderful it was, even as old as Dimitri was, to have someone he could trust so implicitly without reservation or regret. He’d lived, ever since the Tragedy of Duscur, with the knowledge that one day the concerns and griefs of an entire nation would be his to bear; the same knowledge made these last opportunities to entrust his worries to someone stronger even sweeter.

"Professor, you are aware of my crest, I imagine."

She nodded, thankfully saying nothing about his ridiculous statement, and so he forged on,

"It helps me immeasurably on the battlefield, as you know-" Saints, could he just get to the point, "-but the strength it grants me makes small tasks rather, er, difficult."

A faint smile tugged at one side of her mouth. "I'm guessing that's why you've started using steel nibs on your quills, then."

She'd noticed? He straightened, pleasure glowing in his chest. "Yes, I bought a few from Anna last moon. I'd grown frustrated with my nibs breaking and ink getting all over my essays; are they-?" He cut himself short: unbecoming to fish for praise.

"You've improved your writing," she said, and the curl of her lip grew stronger. "I suppose it's easier to write when you know you won't need to redraft multiple times."

Dimitri flushed and rubbed at the back of his head, warmed through. A faint twist of possessiveness curled in his mind, pleased by her praise, by how he'd learned to interpret her sparse expressions so clearly. "Ah, thank you very much, and yes, it is. But as to my crest, I've recently developed a bit of a beard, and I'm having a hard time, er- that is to say, I'm finding myself ill-equipped to-"

Byleth waited him out with the same deadly patience she employed on the training field, her expression blank of judgment or feeling, and that gave him the courage to finally blurt, his face burning,

"I need help shaving, please, Professor."

She absorbed his request, and didn't ask why he needed help with something so basic, or why he'd come to her instead of a barber: only nodded sharply, as if a strategic plan had come together.

"I can do that for you," she said, her voice certain.

He opened his mouth to thank her, but she was already in motion, gesturing him towards the desk chair while she sat on the bed and opened one of her oilcloth sacks. He sat, the chair just as uncomfortable as his own, and watched her search. 

The moment seemed almost too intimate already: her in her faded sleepwear, her feet bare against the cold stone floor; the various bundled weapons and potions she pulled from her bag and set aside attesting to adventures she never spoke of; and him, allowed to be in her space, watching the spare motion of her body.

Byleth lifted two small leather rolls out and came to the desk, placing one bundle in front of Dimitri. The leather was worn, the thong holding it shut frayed at the edges, and the letters 'JE' had been stamped in faded gilt letters beneath the clasp. 

"I suppose," Dimitri said to fill the silence, all too aware of her warmth beside him, the faint scent of water and metal she carried with her, "you're a trained barber as well, Professor? You've proven competent at everything else."

Byleth's laugh was a tiny snort, her mouth twitching, and Dimitri stored the sight away. 

"I'm hardly competent at everything, Dimitri. There's a reason I ask Shamir to teach archery and send you out on your own to learn to fly." She unrolled the bundle across the desk, and an array of objects shone in the candlelight: a folding razor with a metal handle, a chipped stone bowl, a small densely-bristled brush, a few glass vials of some sort of liquid, and a paper-wrapped cake of soap. 

"With items like this, you must know more than most," Dimitri said. "I don't think I've seen such a collection since my father's barber." Sharing the memory hardly hurt, only a faint shudder in his chest, and Byleth did him the favor of not drawing undue attention to it.

Instead, she unrolled the second bundle into a leather strop and hooked it to a peg in the wall. "This is actually my father's spare shaving kit. I have no use for it, myself."

Dimitri blinked. "This is Captain Eisner's?" He hadn't spoken much to the man, with Eisner always out on patrol and Dimitri at his lessons, but Eisner had always seemed a rough sort: absolutely not the kind to invest in grooming materials.

Byleth reached past him to pick up the razor and flick it open, the blade's edge vicious in the dim light, before she started to sharpen it on the strop. Her smile somehow mingled embarrassment and the pleasure of a shared secret as she said,

"My father's one vice is his facial hair, and when he injured his shoulders during a siege, it fell to me to take over his shaving." Her bicep flexed in the light, a surprising amount of strength packed in so small a frame, and Dimitri swallowed the lump in his throat. "He wouldn't trust the camp followers with it, and I was young enough to not be allowed in battle yet. Helping him was a way I could contribute, other than helping to manage stores and pay."

She held the razor aloft and tested it on a spare scrap of paper, then hummed in satisfaction when the paper split in two with hardly an effort. "It still holds an edge, good." She set the razor down and scooped up the bowl, then tossed a sheet at Dimitri, who caught it reflexively. "Dimitri, put this over your clothes. I'm going to get some water." 

Dimitri started up to offer assistance, but she was already out the door, bucket, towel, and bowl in hand, and the creak of the pump outside her door followed immediately. He settled back in the chair and managed to knot the sheet about his neck without ripping it, then had nothing to do but wait.

These days, he had to struggle to remember how disturbing he'd found Byleth that first moon at Garreg Mach. She'd gazed through people as much as at them, and her eyes held no feeling, only the reflection of others. Her lessons were short, to the point, and when Annette or Mercedes asked about such things as trying to preserve enemy life, she'd stared at them like they'd spoken in Dagdan. To say nothing of how rumor had spread among the students that Professor Hanneman discovered she didn't even have a birthday.

He straightened up when she came back in with her items, setting the bucket beside the chair. 

She lifted the towel out of the bucket with both hands, wrung steaming water out of it, then turned to him. "Lean back a bit, lift your chin - yes, good - now be ready, this is a bit warm."

Dimitri held his breath as she wrapped the hot towel around his face, the warmth stinging a bit on the cut he'd given himself, yet it wasn't overwhelming; she must have noted how poorly he'd fared on their missions in the southern heat. She moved briskly, yet carefully, leaning back to check the placement of the cloth, then returning to tuck it tighter about his jawline and pull it looser above the cut. Her expression was set, focused, as she checked it again, then glanced up at Dimitri's eyes.

"Comfortable?"

"Yes," he managed. Thank the Goddess the towel hid his blush at being the subject of her intense scrutiny.

She nodded, then turned towards the items on the desk. The old wax paper crinkled as she peeled it off the soap with careful fingers, leaving a small disk of white soap that smelled of something sharp, something that made his chest ache for Fhirdiad.

"I hope Faerghus pine is acceptable?" 

"Absolutely." It was, in its own way, a small bit of home, here in this tiny room.

She dropped the soap into the bottom of the bowl, then picked up the thick brush and dipped it in the bucket, flicking the excess water back inside. As she held the brush aloft to check the dampness, she asked,

"What kind of soap did you use?"

Dimitri started, too absorbed in watching the easy competency with which she moved. "Oh! I, uh, took some from the sauna."

She glanced aside as she reached past him for the bowl, her warmth and scent palpable. "That was your first mistake. Most soaps don't make a thick enough lather, which makes it easier for you to cut yourself." She pressed the damp brush into the bowl and started stirring, the muscle of her arm and exposed shoulder thrown into relief. White clouds of thick bubbles foamed up from the bottom of the bowl and filled it, and she tilted it for Dimitri to see. "You want your soap to be that thick in order to get a close shave, see?"

"Of course." 

She graced him with another of her subtle smiles before setting the bowl aside and advancing on him to stand just before his knees, reaching for the towel. 

He held his breath as she unwrapped him, the cloth rough on his skin, and tossed the towel aside to inspect his bare face with a critical eye. He nearly choked when she reached up to press one thumb, still cool with the night air, at the hinge of his jaw and run it down to his chin, his stubble rasping the whole way. 

"Your hair doesn't grow the same direction all the way through on your jawline," she observed, as calm as anything, before she ran her cold fingertips over his cheek, leaving little fires in her wake. "Your cheeks will be easier."

She turned away again to get her soap, and Dimitri exhaled his pent-up air in one long breath. Somehow, when he'd thought to ask for help with shaving, he hadn't thought it would be quite so intimate, or he quite so vulnerable - but that was just his misguided affections for her speaking. She must only view this as services rendered to a student.

Byleth turned back to him, brush laden with soap in hand, and stepped right back between his spread knees. It would be so easy to dare to brush his knee against the curve of her hip. 

“I’m going to start now,” she said, her voice low, and Dimitri quelled his shiver with an effort. He nodded.

The scent of pine and ocean and steel grew stronger as her free hand, small and strong, its fingers callused, its knuckles swollen with old breaks, curled about his jaw and urged his head back. He obeyed, the authority in her grip inexorable, and held his breath, gazing at the low stone ceiling, as she swirled warm soap across his neck. 

He couldn’t remember the last time someone had tended to him with such focus and care for reasons other than his status. 

Byleth shifted her grip to press her fingertips and thumb onto his cheekbone, and held him still, moving him where she desired, to paint more soap across his cheeks. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, yet it was peaceful, calming to be held by her, to be given a command he could follow. To exist, for a little space, in a world where things were controlled.

She let go of him as she finished spreading the lather, and the loss ached like a blow to the heart. 

He waited, his skin tingling, impatient, as she set the bowl of soap aside, then tilted her head, assessing.

“It’s not quite even. Hold a moment.”

Obeying was the easiest thing he had ever done. 

Byleth stroked the thick foam into something that met her standards, then rinsed the brush off and set it aside. She reached for the razor and held it in an odd fashion, her fingers curled over the top of the blade, her thumb braced on the side, and then noticed Dimitri’s questioning gaze. 

“Did you not hold yours this way?”

Dimitri almost shook his head, but remembered the soap just in time. “No. I held them by the handles; it seemed to make the most sense.”

There was no mockery in her voice, only thoughtfulness, when she said, “Ah. That explains part of the problem. The handles aren’t meant to be used as handles, more as covers to keep the blade sharp and dry. If you hold it like this-” she demonstrated the grip again, more slowly, “-it gives you better control of the blade and makes it less likely for you to cut yourself. Would you like to try?”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t. I’ve already broken three tonight, I’d hate to add to the tally.”

Her lips tilted in a smile, fine wrinkles appearing at the corners of her eyes. “Understood. I’ll have you shaving yourself by graduation, though.” She lifted the razor, its blade flickering in the candlelight. “Now. Are you ready?”

Dimitri swallowed, and there was nothing to say other than “Yes.”

“Good,” she said, and the praise burst inside him. Beneath the sheet, he dug his fingers into his knees. “Hold completely still. Move only when I move you, and Dimitri?”

He met her gaze again, and she said dryly, “Please remember to breathe.”

Dimitri gulped, and she reached for him. Her free hand pressed above his right ear, calluses rough against his skin, and she drew the skin of his cheek taut. 

She stood close, the generous swell of her chest near, her warmth on his hands, the bare skin of his neck, and this close the faint marks of time were visible: thin scars, a few freckles laced across her shoulder, tantalizingly visible as her stretching urged the loose collar of her shirt down -

Dimitri clenched his eyes shut. Goddess, let him survive this.

Byleth laid the razor against his cheekbone, then pulled it halfway down his cheek, cool air licking against the naked skin left in her wake. A wet sound as she wiped the blade clean on a towel, before she returned, making yet another pass.

He breathed, and they fell into a pattern: her hand, guiding him, making him a canvas, before her razor left him shorn; their breaths in counterpoint, the only other sounds the rasp of hair against metal, blade against cloth, the faint hum she made when starting a pass; her breath stirring his bangs, flickering against his eyelids; the faint red glow of firelight.

His shoulders loosened, old knots he hadn’t realized he bore easing. It was, in an odd way, like sinking, or drifting in a boat upon a pond to see the stars, the way he had as a child: letting himself relax into Byleth’s rhythm, be carried away on it, trusting she would steer him back to shore.

She shaved his right cheek, then tilted his head back and to the left with a slight nudge. “Good so far?”

Dimitri managed a noise of agreement, and she gifted him with another of her snorted laughs. Her grip was firm, no faltering or weakness in it, as if she believed she could bear, could defeat, his hideous strength once unleashed.

She had him nearly purring in her desk chair with a razor at his throat, so she perhaps very well could.

Time unwound itself, the silence comfortable, as she worked across his jaw and down his neck in short, precise strokes. When he opened one eye to peer at her, her expression was calm, even gentle, as if having him here, sharing this with him, was- was a gift.

Saints, if only he could muster the words to _say_ it.

With careful hands and measured action, she shaved the left side of his face, then, with a tenderness that made his heart stutter, his upper lip and chin.

The razor clicked against the desktop, and Dimitri opened his eyes, fighting down the smile that wanted to break across his face.

Byleth bent near him, her gaze intense as she turned his head back and forth. “Decent enough work,” she muttered, more to herself than to him, and turned to dip a washcloth in the bucket. “Hold still again.”

The washcloth slipped cool and refreshing over his newly naked skin, and he could do nothing but gaze at her in helpless gratitude as she cleaned him meticulously. She stood back again, surveyed him, and nodded to herself, dropping the washcloth to the side.

“Good job, Dimitri,” she said, and her praise curled around him like the sweetest pain. “Last step is oil, which you spread over the shaved areas; otherwise you’ll wake up with dry spots. Pick one of these,” she gestured to the three vials of liquid on the desk, “and I’ll pour out the water and put the linens in the sauna hamper.”

Too sunk in the stillness, the gift of being cared for, the words escaped him before he could think them through. “Could you choose, Professor?”

She blinked at him, bent over the bucket, then straightened again, a faint hint of pink dusting her cheekbones. “For you,” she said, stepping lightly over to the desk and indicating the vial with green liquid within, “this one would be best.”

“Thank you, Professor,” he said, and the words hung between them.

She nodded, her face still flushed, and turned back to her work.

Dimitri uncorked the small vial and poured a bit out into his cupped palm, the scent perfusing the air.

Faerghus pine.

Byleth returned to the room as Dimitri had finished straightening up the remaining tools and placed them back in their spots in the leather bundle, and she leaned against the doorframe as Dimitri lingered in the doorway, his tongue thick in his mouth. Heat prickled again at the back of his neck, and why could he not think of what to say, he’d let her _groom_ him for Goddess’ sake-

Before he could work himself into a state, Byleth cut off his fretting.

“Come back the same time next week.”

Relief let him blow out a long sigh and smile at her, the expression more true than it had been in a long time.

“Yes, Professor. Thank you.”

* * *

Dimitri came back, again and again, to Byleth’s room, to the desk chair, to her careful hands.

To her care, freely given.

After Remire, when the voices began to scrape at the inside of his head, driven out by her grip, by his trust in her to place the blade against his throat, and she told him a tale of how Jeralt’s war horse came to hate her that had him struggling not to laugh.

After Thales, after her Lions came upon her clutching her father’s cooling body and weeping openly, horribly, her tears splashing on Jeralt’s beard, on his slack mouth, half-smiling. Dimitri entrusted himself to her once more, and filled her silence with tales from his childhood.

After the forest, when she returned from nothingness with hair and eyes bleached with power, her scent now something like what Dimitri imagined a star might smell like, all lightning and flame. They let there be silence between them that week, the routine familiar and comfortable, and while her hands shook against his skin, she never cut him.

Then. 

Then Edelgard, and the battle, and she fell.

She fell into darkness, and this time she did not return.

Dimitri fled, and the whole way back to Fhirdiad, he thought of her desk, and the two leather rolls she kept in the top drawer.

* * *

Dimitri paused at the entrance to Byleth’s room, surprise flickering dully in his chest at the door, still whole, firmly shut in its place. Dust coated the handle and the lock; the bandits had not made it inside, then. 

_There is nothing in there for you_ , said Glenn, his voice clotted thick with blood and ash. _You have a duty._

 _She hasn’t returned, my son_ , his father said. His charred corpse, twisted and burning, flickered in the corner of Dimitri’s vision. _She will never return._

Still. There had been something in there he wanted, once. He raised a hand, crusted with the bandits’ blood, and scrubbed it across his beard. It was longer than he would have ever permitted it then, longer than he would have let himself go without seeing her.

The handle turned beneath his hand. He stepped inside, and pain ran him through.

Her bed, the coverlet thrown back, the faint impression of her body in the mattress, upon the dust-laden pillowcase. A desk, scattered with papers yellowed with age. A fishing pole leaning by the door. A chipped tea set in the windowsill. Oilskin bags.

As if she had stepped out that morning, expecting nothing but victory. Expecting that she and her Lions would return, as they always had.

_But you didn’t, did you?_

He approached the desk, its empty chair - had he ever fit in so small a thing - and opened the top drawer. It squeaked, the metal rollers rusted, but yes, there:

Two rolls of leather, one tied shut, with the faded gilt shadow of ‘JE’ stamped upon it.

The memories welled up within him, shoved at his throat, stung at his eye with the threat of tears. He snatched the bundles up, tore one open: the razor, the brush, the vial of green-tinged oil, all spilled forth before him, shining relics of a world long gone.

He uncorked the vial and raised it to his face, and the innumerable voices fell silent, all of them, the living and the dead, enraptured by the same scent:

Faerghus pine.

* * *

Late night, and Rodrigue was dead.

Byleth had been returned to them, her warmth a taunt, for moons, and yet she had said nothing about Dimitri’s theft, about the bundles he kept stashed in the cathedral rubble and brooded over in restless jealousy.

Her version of kindness, perhaps.

Dimitri stood at the entrance to the training grounds, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. The former dormitory stretched in front of him, so few lamps lit, yet the one nearest him still burned. Byleth had convinced him to stay, to avoid attacking Enbarr on his own, and he believed her, he _did_ , but the ghosts still thronged. Still whispered, their voices the trickle of rain on stone, the crack of lightning and the boom of thunder.

The strop and the shaving kit weighed heavy in his clumsy bloodstained hands.

Fool. What a fool he was, to believe he could do this, could return to her like a penitent, his sins somehow forgivable. That he could be a man, worthy of care.

Yet. Yet Rodrigue had believed in him, and in his cause, and if he was to be an honest king, it must start here. 

He creaked into motion, the scant space between him and her door longer than it had ever been before. His skin, chilled, pebbled beneath the rain, and his boots tread loud upon the steps up to her door.

He would give Byleth back her stolen gifts, and try as he might to be a king worth her faith.

Again, her shadow, bent over the desk, her hair loose, its curl visible in silhouette, and misery twisted in his gut: five years hence, and what had all her time, her investment, gotten her?

A thief and a beast.

He knocked, the sound a death knell, and watched the shadow move within. 

Byleth opened the door, one brow quirking as she peered up at him. “Dimitri-?” she started, her voice catching, dying, when her gaze dropped to his hands, and what they bore.

He thrust the bundles towards her. “Please,” he said, and his voice cracked, tears welling in his throat. 

She reached out, her hands steady, familiar, seamed with scars, and took the bundles from him, tucking them beneath one arm. Then, she stretched up, onto her tiptoes, and curled one small hand about the back of his neck, her fingers still cold, and drew him down to press his weary head to the strength of her shoulder.

Dimitri shuddered, and wrapped his arms about her, breathing in the terrible scent of power she carried on her skin, and hoped - for even monsters might have hope - for her kindness again. Even though he could never deserve it.

“Thank you,” she said, and her voice eased the terror in his bones. “Thank you for returning these, and for staying, and thank you, most of all, for trusting me.” She drew a shuddering breath. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry,” he choked, “I’m sorry to burden you-”

Her face tilted against his, and then, impossibly, terribly, her lips pressed against his temple.Her hands fisted tight in his cloak, still damp with rain, and smoothed across his trembling shoulders. Her strength bore him up beneath the rain, and if she felt the splash of his tears on her skin she said nothing, only drew him into her room, into the warmth and the light. 

Her voice stirred his hair as she whispered, her voice steady and all the certainty he ever knew,

“You have never been a burden, Dimitri, only a gift.”

He lifted his head from her shoulder to squint at her, disbelief stuck in his throat.

She stroked a thumb across the ragged stubble on his cheek, and her face shone with something he dare not name.

“A gift,” she said again, her gaze steady as a pole star. “Always. I hope you’ll continue to trust me when I say that.”

Hope, love - such things were blades in their own right. Yet he had trusted her, once, to place a razor to his throat and draw the edge across his skin. How could he not trust her now?

“Always,” he said, and the sudden smile on her face was the light of a thousand stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Vienna Teng's 'Enough to Go By.' Reviews, comments, and constructive criticism are all welcome! My Twitter handle is 'carthageburning' and my Tumblr is 'brightlyburning1,' should you want to follow me there.


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